The invention generally relates to fasteners as tacks, nails, staples and so on, as well as, a labor-saving hammer tacker for driving the fastener or tack in accordance with the invention, on a repetitive and highly efficient basis.
Rival or competitive products include pneumatic nailers or staple guns and the like. A pneumatic driver tool gives the promise of high productivity for a construction worker, say, for example, a roofer, who uses the tool to lay shingles. However, there are problems associated with the conventional pneumatic driver tool. The air hose (e.g., also termed the "umbilical cord") is heavy and awkward. Conventionally, the air hose typically extends from a compressor on the ground to the tool carried by the roofer on a roof maybe two or more stories above ground. The roofer must constantly fight the weight and awkwardness of the air hose while at the same time he or she is practicing vigilance not to fall off balance or off the roof. Also, in use, the air hose scrapes back and forth along the free edge of the first row of roof shingles, the row which overhangs the eaves. After the end of a roofing job, those shingles in the first row are often quite damaged.
Another problem with pneumatic nail guns is that, the nails or fasteners adapted for pneumatic nail guns characteristically have a relatively small head. In more technical language, such nail heads have relatively small surface areas. Small-surface area fasteners are not highly effective for attaching soft, thin, membrane materials to hard (typically wooden) structures or substrates. Examples of such materials include not only shingles as previously mentioned, but also roofing felts and house wraps or vapor barriers and the like. Roofers typically substitute conventional staple guns for the conventional pneumatic nailers to both eliminate the air hose and use a fastener effective for attaching soft, thin, membrane materials. However, there are other shortcomings associated with staples.
Staples, even heavy-duty staples, characteristically have legs prone to buckling. During a roofing job, for example, after every so many staples which plunge down correctly, one will go in defectively with a crippled leg buckling or crumpling. If not removed, the buckled leg creates a protrusion likely to wear through the immediately overlying shingle overlapping the one the crippled staple is driven through, and hence create a leak spot.
Overcoming the above shortcomings of the prior art and other aspects and objects are provided according to the invention in a tack having an especially broad flat head to provide a large surface area particularly effective for fastening soft, thin, membrane materials. An inventive aspect of the tack relates to how it is fabricated. The tack is preferably produced from light gauge (e.g., twenty to twenty-four gauge) sheet metal in a progressive die punch, the output of which is directly fed to a collating machine which interconnects the tacks in indefinitely long strips. In addition to the inventive tack, another aspect according to the invention includes a labor-saving hammer tacker for the inventive tacks. The inventive hammer tacker eliminates the air hose of conventional pneumatic tools without sacrificing high productivity performance in roofing and like construction jobs. A number of additional features and objects will be apparent in connection with the following discussion of preferred embodiments and examples.